


hallucinating

by enchantingoats



Series: snk scenes - bittersweet edition [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bathing/Washing, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, mikasa deserves to be happy, references to manga chapters like ch123
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-18 18:35:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28871673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enchantingoats/pseuds/enchantingoats
Summary: Mikasa knew it was undoubtedly her drug-addled subconscious longing for a second reunion with better odds.Still, she wanted to touch him.
Relationships: Mikasa Ackerman/Eren Yeager
Series: snk scenes - bittersweet edition [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2128788
Comments: 8
Kudos: 94





	hallucinating

Her muscles didn’t ache from overuse. Not in the way they should, after hours of using ODM gear, the way it would after an expedition. Mikasa dipped her hand into the bathwater, watching the ripples cascade to the rim before dissipating lightly. Instead of soreness, there was a fatigue, a tiredness that started in her bones and coursed through the underside of her arms. Something deep in her core—a tension she had mastered that kept her centered and sharp—was dulling and left her skin hypersensitive in its wake. She slid lower into the metal bath, feeling the buzzing friction of the heated metal against her thighs and back. 

Here, it was easy to feel weightless. With the luxury of hot water, a private space, and the dull echoing of her ears every time the water sloshed around her head. Here, the pain ebbed a bit. Her hair was free to chase wayward currents as she shook her head side to side. The water continued to rock her even after.

Her headache did not subside.

_Ah, this again._

She broke the surface of the bathwater again. Cold puckered the skin on her chest as droplets pooled on her collarbone and ran down the contours of her body. 

He sat facing her, leaning back against the wall. His hair was long, the bags under his eyes pronounced. His features were familiar and unnervingly different; tan skin dusted with stubble and the faint outline of a beard, the soft slope of his nose freckled with sunspots. He looked at her the way he always had looked at her. Save their last encounter. 

Arms resting on his bent legs and hands she hadn’t held, not in many years. The changes had been gradual through their adolescent years. Now, faced with an older Eren, she was all at once acutely aware of the culmination of it all at once. Beautiful, but more than that, cherished.

To accentuate her existing misery, her imagination had dredged up the very picture of lapsed hygiene and care she had seen that night. Mikasa knew it was undoubtedly her drug-addled subconscious longing for a second reunion with better odds. 

Still, she wanted to touch him. 

To cup his cheek, to thumb his eyelids and feel the featherlight brush of lashes under her fingertips. To brush away the dark circles that had etched themselves into his skin. To feel the prickle of stubble and roughness of his chapped lips against the calluses of her palm. 

To push his hair back and see the full face of the one she loved. To hold him there. To feel utterly disarmed.

When was the last time she had held him for the sake of being held? All physical contact had been so purposeful between them lately. It must have been the Smiling Titan.

This was the one she had called family. The one who was also so much more.

Apparently only being moments away from death could tear the truth from her lips.

She drifted towards him, but the very thought of imminent contact stilled her movement before withdrawing her hand into a fist. She sighed, pressing the fist to her chest, hoping it might stifle the ache in her sternum. It was no good, interacting with a hallucination. It was supposed to just help her sleep.

It was hard enough being told to wash away a decade of undying emotion for one of the only ones she truly cared about. A brutal killer she may be, but the intangible was always harder to massacre. Perhaps it would have been easier if it had been acted on, actualized. Instead, her head was full of impossible possibilities, diverging paths she ought to have pursued. 

The hallucination had shifted, borrowed the softness in his eyes from that night. A furrow between brows she wished she could press away, if only to distract herself from the yearning for more. 

_What am I to you?_

She looked at her hallucination before laughing bitterly. “This is just cruel.”

The blurriness of tears bated with every blink, but Mikasa could not draw her eyes away. She followed every curve, every plane of his face silently. Her heart screamed. 

Finally forcing her head away, she looked at the small bottle on the counter. 

“I wonder if this is what the medicine will cost,” she told him. Armin had pressed the bottle of sleeping pills into her hand, a sad look in his eyes. She had promised to try it, and breaking promises with him didn’t come naturally. Even if it cost her heart, her soul, her sanity. Their absence would be easier to conceal than the marks of sleep deprivation.

“Oh, that’s what you think this is.”

“It talks.” Mikasa felt the shudder course up her spine before scooping water and scrubbing away the paths of tears on her cheeks. The water was losing its vitality and her skin felt clammy and sticky. Rising, she stood in the tub, hesitating over whether to step on or over the hallucination.

She stepped over. It was better to ignore the immaterial than attempt to interact with it further. Water pooled in her steps and the rudimentary and quick toweling down she did left wet patches that seeped into her shirt as she began to button.

She felt the hands reach around her waist, pulling her backwards. 

_So be it._

She let her head loll back to rest against the chest behind her and swayed lightly. She breathed in time with their sways and the movement of his chest behind her. 

“This is a dream,” she said softly. The words were reverential, barely a whisper.

She felt the low hum in the back of her skull, feeling his shirt where it touched her neck grow damp from her locks. Maybe the pills and their side effects weren’t so bad. It could fix one problem, even if it made the rest worse. Mikasa closed her eyes.

She thought she felt a soft press on the top of her head before the lull became impossible to ignore.

When she woke, Mikasa reached across the starched sheets, almost by instinct.

The pillow next to her was still warm. 

The ache in her heart throbbed with newfound vigor.

**Author's Note:**

> these two make me sad. first piece of writing posted on the internet, enjoy!


End file.
